Santos and FARC tipped to win 2016 Nobel Peace Prize

Colombia’s government and rebel group FARC are among the favorites to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize if they are able to sign peace, several experts said Monday.

According to UK news agency Reuters, Colombia was tipped by several experts together with former US spy contractor Edward Snowden and Greek civilians who have helped refugees from Syria.

Asle Sveen, an historian and expert on the prize, said he reckoned the “obvious choice” for 2016 would be to honor Colombia’s government and FARC rebel group – if they succeed in peace talks launched in 2012 to end five decades of war, according to Reuters.

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The scholar stressed that Norway, the host of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, is also acting as guarantor of the peace talks that began in 2012. This Norwegian involvement could sway the five-member Nobel committee towards opting for Colombia.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, the head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo told the news agency he put Colombia’s peace negotiators third on his list of likely Peace Prize winners behind the negotiators of a nuclear deal with Iran.

The Nobel Peace Prize is granted annually to individuals or groups who have contributed to global peace.

Last year, the prize went to the Tunesian National Dialogue Quartet “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.”

The administration of President Juan Manuel Santos began formal peace talks with the FARC in 2012 after a conflict that victimized more than 7 million Colombians.

The warring parties face tens of thousands of accusations of human rights violations committed within the context of the armed conflict that began in 1964.